I live in a signal black hole, the only room that gets good enough signal for our weather alert radio is the kitchen and while I normally wake up when the alarm set off I would like something in our bedroom.

Looking at the freqs, 162.500Mhz, I am wondering if any base statio VHF antenna will work for the application and as the run coax run will be 40+ feet is there an inline amp I would need to use?

Or if there is a better receiver to use, at the moment I am using a stock Midland receiver.

I'm far from an expert (despite having an Amateur Extra license - the test is a joke if you have some electrical engineering background, but I have very little experience).

With that said, I have a fair bit of boating experience, and that frequency is within the same range as the marine VHF bands. Marine VHF antennas are routinely installed on the end of at least 40 feet of coax with no problems.

162.5MHz is 14Mhz above the top end of the amateur 2 meter (144-148 MHz) band, but for a receive-only application I'd think a 2 meter antenna would work OK. They're not terribly expensive, and most are small enough that you can install one in your attic if you don't want to put it on the roof on on an outside mast. Or you could hang it from a tree limb if you have one handy.

If you're the DIY type, you can build one of your own and optimize it for your frequency of interest (it would be just slightly shorter than one built for 2M). Here is one place to look for details.

As to other receivers or amplifiers, sorry I can't help you there.

Most VHF amateur antennas are tuneable so I would not hesitate to get and use it. A better option would be a discone antenna. If you need a preamp, there are many 20 to 30 db amplifiers with very low noise figures.

quote:

Originally posted by dewhorse:
I am wondering if any base statio VHF antenna will work for the application and as the run coax run will be 40+ feet is there an inline amp I would need to use?

Forty feet isn't all that far. Use RG8X if you can. But does said radio have a connector for an external antenna? Because if it does not, some surgery will be required. Then there's the question of whether the connection impedance will be 75 ohms--which I suspect it will not.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
I'm far from an expert (despite having an Amateur Extra license - the test is a joke ...

One of the many reasons I dropped Ham Radio some twenty years ago. Once-upon-a-time even a General/Tech. license was difficult. (I had an Advanced before I let it lapse.)

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
With that said, I have a fair bit of boating experience, and that frequency is within the same range as the marine VHF bands. Marine VHF antennas are routinely installed on the end of at least 40 feet of coax with no problems.

Well more than that for many masthead-mounted VHF antennas.

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:
162.5MHz is 14Mhz above the top end of the amateur 2 meter (144-148 MHz) band, ...

quote:

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie:
Most VHF amateur antennas are tuneable ...

Not that far, they're not. That's more than three times as far outside the 2M band as the entire 2M allocation, itself.

Amateur Extra Class here.

An external antenna will usually beat the pants off of the rig's built in antenna.

Do you still have the owners manual? It may have info on hooking up an external antenna.

If not I would contact the radio manufacturer or importer for their comments on hooking up an external antenna. Their website may have contact info.

What is the brand and model of your weather radio?

There's not much point in trying to reinvent the wheel when it may already be available to you.
.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
I'm far from an expert (despite having an Amateur Extra license - the test is a joke ...

One of the many reasons I dropped Ham Radio some twenty years ago. Once-upon-a-time even a General/Tech. license was difficult. (I had an Advanced before I let it lapse.)

To be fair, I did a fair amount of electrical engineering coursework as part of my mechanical engineering degrees, and have done a lot of hobbyist electronics work, just not in radio. It would have been considerably more difficult without that background.

For receive cut a piece of stainless 15-16" long. They make little ferrules that accept a "stinger" of any length then thread into a 3/8" CB type antenna mount. Then you would have a variety of mounting options. For receive I don't think it matters much if you use 50 or 75 ohm coax. It won't take much to achieve your goal.

Another amateur Extra class here with extensive experience in RF.

If you use RG8x, your loss for 40 feet of coax would be around 2-1/2 or 3 db, which is esentially negligible for your application.

Most of the Midland base weather stations have antenna jacks on the back.

Amateur General Class here and almost any external antenna should dramatically improve the received signal. If you wish to use a attic location make sure that you do not have a metal roof or tinfoil/ etc sheeting on any insulation under roof as this will drasticilly could curtail the incoming signal. Sort of like a umbrella effect... You donot have to spend a lot of money for a store bought one when a home built can work just fine for a receive operation. AS for feedline even the old school 300ohm tv twinline conecting wire depending on what the actuall antenna is or possibly taping a length of wire on the inside of a wall. Very simple or very costly ---- your choice.. .................drill sgt / aka KL7JIU

I don't suppose that you have an old TV antenna on the roof that happens to point to the same general direction as the weather service transmitter?

I know, it's a long shot, but if so, you might be able to use a splitter and get the signal that way since the weather frequency band isn't too far from the start of the TV VHF-Hi band........... Of course your TV antenna is Horizontal, and the NOAA weather signals are vertical, so you may lose something there, but still worth trying.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: radioman,

Here's a shopping list for you.

Antenna: https://smile.amazon.com/TWAYR...id=1612146691&sr=8-5

Cable: https://smile.amazon.com/MPD-D...12147190&sr=8-3&th=1

Antenna mount: https://smile.amazon.com/XRDS-...id=1612147252&sr=8-3

The only thing missing is I'd need to know what type of antenna connection your radio has for the end of this. If you're going 40' you want a decent antenna wire like LMR400 to avoid signal loss. But keep in mind it's fairly thick at just under 1/2".

If you don't mind cheap-and-dirty, I think you could get good results by connecting one end of a 6' bare wire to the center conductor of a coax coming from your radio into your attic. Just trim off the shield so that it doesn't contact the center conductor and hang it any way you can (avoiding metal objects).
You're only making an antenna to receive with. It isn't nearly as difficult as one to transmit on.
The 6' wire length is approximately a full wave of your receive frequency.

Some great info / suggetsions here...thank you, I have worked in cellular for the past 25 years but beyond tuning a CB or 2 I have not dabbled in getting my lic. Suppose I should since I bought a nice yaesu FT1990 off a member here 5-6 years ago

It's an RCA connector, the receiver is the basic midland weather radio AM/FM, I do have what I guess is an old TV yagi in the attic that the previous owners left....along with the snake pit of old coax I had to go through to see what works.

maybe I can find a DB antenna to kill 2 birds so to speak since I dug out the Yaesu last week to build a base station so I could at least listen